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"If the Saint calls you, if you have an open road, then you don't feel the fire as if it were your enemy," says one of the participants in the Anastenaria. This compelling work evokes and contrasts two forms of firewalking and religious healing: first, the Anastenaria, a northern Greek ritual in which people who are possessed by Saint Constantine dance dramatically over red-hot coals, and, second, American firewalking, one of the more spectacular activities of New Age psychology. Loring Danforth not only analyzes these rituals in light of the most recent work in medical and symbolic anthropology but also describes in detail the lives of individual firewalkers, involving the reader personally in their experiences: he views ritual therapy as a process of transformation and empowerment through which people are metaphorically moved from a state of illness to a state of health. Danforth shows that the Anastenaria and the songs accompanying it allow people to express and resolve conflict-laden family relationships that may lead to certain kinds of illnesses. He also demonstrates how women use the ritual to gain a sense of power and control over their lives without actually challenging the ideology of male dominance that pervades Greek culture. Comparing the Anastenaria with American firewalking, Danforth includes a gripping account of his own participation in a firewalk in rural Maine. Finally he examines the place of anthropology in a postmodern world in which the boundaries between cultures are becoming increasingly blurred.

Spiritual healing --- Fire walking --- Divine healing --- Faith-cure --- Faith healing --- Spiritual therapies --- Healing --- Miracles --- Firewalking --- Walking on fire --- Fire --- Religious aspects --- United States --- Greece --- Religious life and customs.

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Social sciences (general)

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This compelling text and dramatic photographic essay convey the emotional power of the death rituals of a small Greek village--the funeral, the singing of laments, the distribution of food, the daily visits to the graves, and especially the rite of exhumation. These rituals help Greek villagers face the universal paradox of mourning: how can the living sustain relationships with the dead and at the same time bring them to an end, in order to continue to live meaningfully as members of a community? That is the villagers' dilemma, and our own. Thirty-one moving photographs (reproduced in duotone to do justice to their great beauty) combine with vivid descriptions of the bereaved women of "Potamia" and with the words of the funeral laments to allow the reader an unusual emotional identification with the people of rural Greece as they struggle to integrate the experience of death into their daily lives. Loring M. Danforth's sensitive use of symbolic and structural analysis complements his discussion of the social context in which these rituals occur. He explores important themes in rural Greek life, such as the position of women, patterns of reciprocity and obligation, and the nature of social relations within the family.

#SBIB:39A10 --- #SBIB:39A72 --- Antropologie: religie, riten, magie, hekserij --- Etnografie: Europa --- Death --- Funeral rites and ceremonies --- Laments --- Social aspects --- History and criticism. --- Greece --- Rural conditions. --- Social life and customs. --- Complancha --- Lamentations --- Elegiac poetry --- Mourning customs --- Dying --- End of life --- Life --- Terminal care --- Terminally ill --- Thanatology --- History and criticism --- Philosophy --- Griechenland --- Grèce --- Hellas --- Yaṿan --- Vasileion tēs Hellados --- Hellēnikē Dēmokratia --- République hellénique --- Royaume de Grèce --- Kingdom of Greece --- Hellenic Republic --- Ancient Greece --- Ελλάδα --- Ellada --- Ελλάς --- Ellas --- Ελληνική Δημοκρατία --- Ellēnikē Dēmokratia --- Elliniki Dimokratia --- Grecia --- Grčija --- Hellada --- اليونان --- يونان --- al-Yūnān --- Yūnān --- 希腊 --- Xila --- Греция --- Gret︠s︡ii︠a︡ --- Alexiou, M. --- God. --- Haros. --- affines. --- binary oppositions. --- bitterness. --- black. --- burial. --- candles. --- clothes. --- confinement. --- corpse. --- decomposition. --- departure. --- earth. --- emergence. --- exhumation. --- family relationships. --- flowers. --- funeral service. --- graves. --- grief. --- harvest. --- immortality. --- incense. --- inheritance. --- kerchief. --- laments. --- lamps. --- liminality. --- marriage. --- memorial services. --- mother-in-law. --- naming system. --- obligations of living to dead. --- ommon-sense perspective. --- pain. --- paradise. --- religious perspective. --- Ritus i cerimònies fúnebres --- Mort --- Aspectes socials --- Vida social i costums.

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Social sciences (general)